Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Curiosity, Imagination, and Exploration

Curiosity and imagination occupied much of my time and space as a nine year old growing up in Winchester, Kentucky. Exploration, added to the previous items, would certainly offer many unusual discoveries. Mam maw's and Pap paw's house on Jackson Street was a major focal point of my exploration.

Starting at the player piano, there would be two wooden doors that opened to a metal cylinder with hundreds of tiny projections forming unusual geometric patterns. Next was the three-legged piano stool that had a round, wooden seat that could be spun higher and higher, but never seemed to fly off in space. The large green couch was next which became a swing bridge over a deep gully that only the bravest could cross, careful not to fall into the abyss below! After navigating the swing bridge, you came to Mam maw's Singer Sewing Machine. What an amazing piece of engineering! A large black iron foot piece (I called the gas petal) moved up and down to produce a spinning motion to a round wheel on the right. The round wheel was connected to the gas petal by a brown leather cord bound tightly to its side, which then moved a metal needle up and down on the flat surface. The faster you pedaled, the faster the needle moved up and down. The drawers, three on each side, contained the most amazing group of objects including a drawer full of small, metal caps that fit over the tips of your fingers; a small, stuffed, red pillow stuck with hundreds of needles(Ouch!); strips of different colored cloth; small pencils; various-sized larger needles with funny hooks on them; and many, many other funny looking things that must had hooked on to the sewing machine somehow. Wow! Who would have thought that you could step on a metal platform near the floor and move a needle on the table above. What would man come up with next?